Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to an electronic device, system and method for near field communication (NFC).
Description of Related Art
The NFC Forum, a non-profit industry association whose member organizations share development, application, and marketing expertise to develop the best possible solutions for advancing the use of NFC, has defined the NFC controller interface in “NFC CONTROLLER INTERFACE (NCI)”, Technical Specification, Version 1.1, Oct. 25, 2013, which describes different mechanisms to configure the NFC controller (NFCC) and to exchange data with the NFC controller and other entities within a device. On the other hand, GlobalPlatform, another cross industry, non-profit association which identifies, develops and publishes specifications that promote the secure and interoperable deployment and management of multiple applications on secure chip technology, is working on standardizing APIs for a trusted execution environment (TEE). The TEE offers a more secure environment in which also signed applications can run. In addition GlobalPlatform is also working on defining secure element access control mechanisms.
Many Android-powered devices that offer NFC functionality already support NFC card emulation. In most cases, the card is emulated by a separate chip in the device, called a secure element. Many SIM cards provided by wireless carriers also contain a secure element. The latest Android platform introduces an additional method of card emulation that does not involve a secure element, called host-based card emulation (HCE). This allows any Android application to emulate a card and talk directly to the NFC reader.
Usually every (physical) card having NFC capabilities has a unique identifier (also referred to as card ID). The reader/writer device sends an anti-collision polling command to learn this ID. Subsequent read or write commands are sent with this ID to address the specific application/card. The HCE feature supported by the latest Android platform allows applications running on the application processor to emulate a contactless card having NFC capabilities. However, the anti-collision is time critical and must be therefore handled by the NFC controller (referred to as front end unit herein). The NFC Forum has specified in the “NFC CONTROLLER INTERFACE (NCI)”, specification a mechanism that allows the application processor to configure 0 to 16 anti-collision data sets (for 0 to 16 applications since one set per application is used) for NFC-F.
US 2012/0092137 A1 discloses an NFC device (i.e. an electronic device for NFC communication) including a processor and a front end unit (FEU) to communicate with an external reader/writer device. The FEU stores, by first memory, a first number of sets of application parameters, each set including first and second identifiers. The processor stores, by second memory, the application and a second number of the sets. The FEU receives a communication request from the external device, including a certain first identifier. The FEU checks, when the request is received, whether the certain first identifier is stored in the first memory. If yes, a response is sent to the external device, including a respective second identifier, which is in the same set of parameters as the certain first identifier. The FEU sends, each time a request is received, a response (i.e. an event) to the processor. The processor controls which sets of parameters are stored in the first memory based on the response. Thus, in this document an event mechanism is described that allows an entity, e.g. the application processor (referred to as processing unit herein), to dynamically update the anti-collision configuration depending on the incoming request. This allows the system to handle more applications than the NFC Controller can manage.
The “background” description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventor(s), to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description which may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly or impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.